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Mine Health and Safety Act, 1996 (Act No. 29 of 1996)

Regulations

Guideline for a Mandatory Code of Practice

Occupational Health Programme (Occupational Hygiene and Medical Surveillance) on Personal Exposure to Airborne Pollutants

Part A : The Guideline

4. Definitions and Acronyms

 

In this guideline for a COP, unless the context otherwise indicates:

 

"Airborne pollutant"

means any substance in the air that is harmful to health, including dust, fumes, aerosols, gases, fibres, vapours or mists.

 

"Analysis methodology"

means analysis techniques used to quantify a pollutant collected on or in sampling media (e.g.  gas chromatography/mass spectrometry).

 

"CIOM"

means Chief Inspector of Mines.

 

"COP"

means code of practice,

 

"DMR"

means the Department of Mineral Resources.

 

"Exposure"

means the subjection of a person to an airborne pollutant during employment through any route of entry (e.g, inhalation, ingestion, skin contact or absorption).

 

"Homogeneous exposure group (HEG)"

means a group of employees whose exposures to a hazardous agent have been determined to be statistically similar enough that, by monitoring a small number of individuals in the group, the exposures of the remaining workers can be defined.

 

"MOHAC"

means Mining Occupational Health Advisory Committee.

 

"Monitoring"

means the repetitive and continued observation, measurement and evaluation of health and/or environmental, or technical data according to pre-arranged schedules, using nationally or internationally acceptable methodologies.

 

"MHSA"

means the Mine Health and Safety Act, 1996 (Act 29 of 1996) as amended.

 

"NIOSH"

means the United States National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

 

"Qualitative"

means observations or information characterised by measurement on a categorical scale (i.e. dichotomous or nominal scale) or, if the categories are ordered, an ordinal scale e.g. "low", "medium", "high".

 

"Quantitative"

means data in numerical quantities such as continuous measurements or counts e.g, percentile or rates.

 

"Occupational exposure limit (OEL)"

means the TWA concentration for an 8-hour work day and a 40-hour work week to which nearly all workers may be repeatedly exposed to without adverse health effects.

 

"Sampling cycle"

means the planned sampling program for the year, which must terminate at the end of each calendar year,

 

"TWA"

means time weighted average.

 

"90th percentile"

means the statistical value of exposure data which u be used to determine when HEGs need to be re-classified, calculated either by:

Using Microsoft Excel programme (percentile function); or
First placing all sample results in order from the lowest concentration to the highest concentration (i.e. concentration of specific contaminants). Next, assign each sample result a number, starting with the number one for the lowest concentration result up to the highest Concentration being given the number equal to the total number of samples collected in that HEG. Multiply the total number of samples collected by 0.9. The sample result with the number corresponding to this calculated value is the 90th percentile.

 

 


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